TL;DR – Call to Arms is a quasi-successor to the Men of War RTT/RTS series, which boasts a few genuinely impressive additions alongside one or two smaller changes that frankly kinda suck. In theory it was meant to signify the end of the iterative Men of War, a game which managed to have no less than 6 stand-alone expansion packs with some of those expansions even offering their own expansions. It’s fair to say that things got messy, and bringing the series into the modern era with some shiny new features is a welcome change. Unfortunately the game is still rough around the edges as ever, so it’s a game that I can only really recommend to existing fans and/or those who are looking for a RTS with a couple of gimmicks. Everyone else would probably be better served with either Company of Heroes (the classic) or Men of War Assault Squad 2 which is basically the same as this game, but with more missions and factions and cheaper.
Call to Arms is one of those games I was pretty excited about, until I made the fateful decision to actually play the damn thing. Which isn’t to say it’s a bad game, because it’s not, but it languished in my Steam library for years before I decided to finally give it another go and try to figure out what made me drop it in the first place. Honestly I’m not sure what caused me to get butthurt the last time, although I think I played it during early access and as such there were only 5 campaign missions which may have been entirely different from the ones in the base game. After playing through the campaign I can say that it’s alright, the mission structure will be incredibly familiar to anyone who’s played a Men of War game (any of them, even Faces of War the unofficial member!) because they all fit into a handful of standard roles. You’ve got two stealth missions, where you have barely any guys and have to crawl around the map dodging patrols until you can start shredding fools. Then you’ve got the defence missions where you hold a position against waves of baddies, and a couple of standard attack the enemy piece-by-piece missions where they keep adding new objectives while you have not quite enough men or material left. Finally there’s a proper assault mission which is saved for last, in which you not only attack various objectives but also get to call in reinforcements. The main twist in this campaign is a mission where you can only use Direct Control over a tank, and you drive around with some buddies shredding the defenders of an airfield before shooting down some jets and taking piece in a steadfast defence against waves of enemy armour. Most of these missions are pretty fun, although some of them (such as the 3rd mission) are much, much, much easier if you utilise direct control to a level I’ve never seen before.
Those not familiar with the Men of War series will no doubt be asking WTF is Direct Control? Well it’s when you assume direct control of a unit in the game, with the option of controlling them in 1st or 3rd person. You can control any unit at any time and the only catch is that while you’re laughing it up as a tank, you can’t be directing the rest of your forces. This feature has also been in previous games in the series, but the first person view and controls are entirely new to my knowledge. It’s a fun little gimmick and directly controlling an Abrams tank is pretty fun, I’m not going to lie while the soldier controls do let relieve your Rambo 3 fantasies on those nasty Global Revolutionary Movement baddies. One other caveat with this feature is that you have to bind both all of your 1st person controls, and all of your RTS controls on the same keyboard and mouse which means that the direct control erm controls are frankly a bit weird. Crouch is ALT, grenade is Mouse button 4 and so on. To make things even trickier, you still have to worry about your limited inventory because in Call to Arms like in Men of War every unit has their own inventory and consequentially their own amount of ammo. Unfortunately the other thing making direct control slightly tricky is the fact that it seems kind of… bugged? I don’t know why, but quite often when using an automatic weapon it would just keep shooting continuously for a while of it’s own volition. Then sometimes it wouldn’t fire for ages, again for some reason that I can’t quite figure out. Ultimately it’s a cool feature, that gets a lot of emphasis in the campaign but does lack a bit of polish. It’s also kinda over powered, because you can absolutely start shredding the enemy while in first person to the point that you’ll often find yourself racking up huge body counts with each soldier.
In terms of other changes to the game, Call to Arms sadly falls short. You do get two new factions in a contemporary setting, but the “bad guys” the Global Revolutionary Movement are pretty boring and so-so as they’re just a generic middle eastern “rebel” movement. You’re not getting something like the Global Liberation Army from C&C Generals which was oozing flavour and fun, but instead you’re getting the generic baddies from a war on terror game. So they’ve got some soviet-era tanks, a bunch of generic middle eastern dudes and nothing in the way of excitement. Then you’ve got the US Army, who are fine but have a pretty limited roster as they only really get the Abrams, Bradley, Striker and Humvee vehicles alongside a couple of types of infantry grunts. Compared to Men of War Assault Squad which let you play as (WW2) Germany, Russia, America, the British Commonwealth and Imperial Japan each of which had as many, if not more units each it’s a bit disappointing. You’d be forgiven for thinking “oh well this is the new baseline just like Men of War only had Russia and Germany”, but you can jog on because they’ve used Call to Arms as a gateway to introduce a new WW2 subgame (Gates to Hell) which has reintroduced all the WW2 factions (except Japan I think). So it’s kind of a small game, considering that you get only one campaign unless you upgrade to the Deluxe edition for an extra 750 Great British pennies or roughly $10 with only 10 campaign missions in the base game. Then it’s just skirmish and multiplayer maps against other players, so there isn’t too much to run with here.
As for the rest of the game, it’s really just a shinier version of Men of War as mentioned already. This means that you get an OK/10 soundtrack that you won’t listen to outside of the game but is fine enough and fits the mood. That means that the voice acting is bad, although it’s slightly better and no longer has laughably direct translations from Russian (so no more Americans shouting “FOR THE MOTHERLAND” and “HOORAY” when they get into combat). That means that you’ve got the armour penetration system with different shots and angles having a huge impact, which is still great although I must confess that it feels like battle tanks are well… tankier than they used to be. Finally it means that individual squads are alright at looking after themselves and will use grenades and medkits without too much prompting, although there is one big change that kind of got on my tits. You see in the other Men of War games, infantry had Anti-Tank grenades which meant that they could deal with unexpected enemy armour reinforcements without much trouble. Of course they’d quickly run out, but hey a decent amount of enemies had them too so you could just scavenge for them when there was a quiet moment. In Call to Arms these have been removed entirely, which doesn’t impact the enemy much because they get lots of Anti Tank rifles such as RPG’s mixed in with their squads. You don’t though, and the few AT missiles you do get tend to be wasted nearly instantly by your squad members as soon as they spot an enemy technical. You know, those jeeps with machine guns on them which the game LOVES to throw your way CONSTANTLY and which are even annoying to deal with in Direct Control mode because the driver will magically teleport to the gunners seat and back to the drivers seat endlessly making sniping them a total pain in the arse. The lack of AT grenades also means that your infantry, especially in the earlier missions will be totally bloody useless against any enemy tank and your own tank will be outnumbered 10-to-1 while dealing with swarms of enemy infantry with RPGs. It’s a weird downgrade and kind of annoying to be honest. Aside from this weird decision, combat is pretty much identical although there is a noticeable shortage of anti-tank cannons this time around.
And that’s about it really. There’s some new in-game monetisation stuff going on but honestly I can’t even pretend to care about it so make of it what you will. There was also some sort of controversy about the Season Pass not including the WW2 stuff, but again I don’t care because what sort of chump buys content that’s not out yet? Well me because I bought it during Early Access for a fiver but that’s totally different (honest). Aside from those two changes that I am frankly oblivious to, there’s not anything else to discuss. Call to Arms is Men of War but prettier and featuring ‘Murica against the generic middle eastern bad guys. Direct Control is a lot better, everything else is slightly better but there’s also a lot less content to go around. Make of it what you will. For existing Men of War fans it’s a fun little quasi-sequel, for casual RTS fans who haven’t played a Men of War game I can give it a modest recommendation whilst on sale and for everyone else I wouldn’t worry about it too much. It’s a perfectly fine and modest RTT experience with some fun missions, not a huge amount of content but you can always play it in Skirmish or MP or buy the DLC that doesn’t that much these days. Therefore I’m giving Call to Arms a singular thumbs up. Huzzah!